


The Cost Of Victory

by morwen_of_gondor



Series: The Kingston Shatterpoint [8]
Category: Hornblower (TV), Hornblower - C. S. Forester
Genre: Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Book 5: Lord Hornblower, Breaking It Differently, Brotherhood, Character Death Swap, Depending on your perspective, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Male Friendship, Napoleonic Wars, Period Typical Attitudes, and not quite as badly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-14 08:41:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29539752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morwen_of_gondor/pseuds/morwen_of_gondor
Summary: Sometimes the cost of battle is light. Sometimes you're lucky, and everyone walks away.Sometimes they don't, and the ones who are left have to pick up the pieces.
Relationships: William Bush & Horatio Hornblower & Archie Kennedy
Series: The Kingston Shatterpoint [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2032912
Comments: 10
Kudos: 6





	The Cost Of Victory

**Author's Note:**

> I think I must have put too much fluff into _Dead Reckoning,_ because the angst muse showed up and demanded that I write this shortly after I finished that.

"Nonsuch, to me!" Bush roared, slashing furiously at the nearest French uniform as the Frogs did their damnedest to chase his men into the river.

A handful of seamen cut their way through the blue-and-red ranks, and he fired the last charge in his pistol — not his, actually, he'd taken it off a dead man — over their heads to give them a little cover as they scrambled up the side of the powder barge to join him. He spared a glance over his shoulder and saw that his lieutenant, who had insisted on coming despite the risk of depriving _Nonsuch_ of her two most senior officers, was similarly occupied by the other rail.

"All but three of you men," he shouted, "Over the side and into the boats! Leave one for us, now. Understand?"

A ragged chorus of "Aye aye, sir!" answered him, and all but three of _Nonsuch's_ men disappeared over the rail of the barge into the boats. He could at least see to it that most of his men made it back to Le Havre alive.

Bush trusted that they would leave a boat for him and Kennedy to escape in. If they stayed alive long enough to escape. For every soldier shot or slashed down by his men, two more swarmed up out of the darkness, and already they had realised that the barge was too lightly defended to stop them. It would be a matter of seconds before Bush and his men were cut off. The rear guard, he realised, would not be leaving alive. "Get to the boat!" he bellowed at the three seamen who stood with him. "Now!" he added when they hesitated. 

Another glance over his shoulder showed him Kennedy still laying about him with his sword by the larboard rail. "Go!" he roared again, now at his first lieutenant, seized a pistol right out of the hand of an astonished Frenchman, and aimed it at the nearest hatchway. On a powder barge like this, nearly any shot that made its way belowdecks would suffice to send the whole ship off to Kingdom Come.

The moment before he pulled the trigger, a solid body slammed into him, hard, and he was knocked backwards over the side. Then he struck the water and was swallowed up by cold darkness and fiery light that was nearly blinding in its intensity even through the murky river-water, just as a shockwave slammed into his chest with all the force of a musket ball and drove all the air out of his lungs. He tried instinctively to breathe, and found that he was underwater. 

Archie heard Bush's warning yell and saw him aim a pistol — where on earth had he gotten it? — down at the magazine. _Oh, no you don't, sir!_ he thought furiously, and looked around for options. No time to lay a powder trail. No lamp to set the barge on fire. Frenchmen everywhere. _Damn._ Archie raced across the deck with a desperate turn of speed, seized his captain by the waist, and slung him over the rail, grasping the pistol out of his hand as he did so. Bush was a heavy man, and Archie's momentum was only just enough to carry him over the rail, but it was enough.

Archie pulled the trigger, and the world exploded.

Bush was no better a swimmer than he had been in Haiti so long ago, when his two junior lieutenants had dragged him bodily off a cliff into the sea, and he was dazed by the shockwave that had driven him through the water. But he was not in the bottomless sea now, and when he struck the bottom of the river he had enough sense left to push off of it. When his head broke the surface of the water, he flailed with his arms until his hand struck a floating board. With its support, he was able to look around at the changed world. Every building he could see was roofless, the walls cut off six feet above the ground. Many were burning. Of the powder barge and Kennedy there was no trace. He swore vehemently and splashed towards the shore as best he could. Before he had reached it — his progress was slow — a boat rowed up out of the shadows, and he recognised the _Nonsuch's_ launch. "Captain, sir!" called a voice he dimly recognised. "Mr. Kennedy, sir!"

"Over here!" Bush called back, as well as he could with his mouth half full of water. The launch promptly turned towards his voice, and the next moment strong hands had seized his and he was lying on the bottom of the boat, spluttering and coughing. 

"Captain, are you all right, sir?"

"I'm fine, Abbot," Bush said, putting a name to the face bending over him just in time. "Have you picked up anyone else?"

"No, sir. The others were all off before us. All but you and Mr. Kennedy. Do you know what became of him, sir?"

"Kennedy!" Bush bellowed instead of answering. "Where are you, man? Archie! Archie!"

There was no answer. "Hellfire and damnation," Bush snarled, "we'll just have to find him the old-fashioned way. Row around where the powder barge was. He may have been thrown clear. No, wait. Put me ashore first, and I'll see if I can find him on land."

The look Abbot gave him made it clear that he did not expect their search to produce anything. Bush, knowing who must have blown the barge up, knew that it would not, but he could not leave without being quite sure.

The only things he found on shore were dead Frenchmen and burning houses. When Abbot and his mates came round at the other end of their circle, he could see that there was no fourth figure in their boat, and swore again. He climbed into the launch without another word, and joined the men at the oars as they turned the launch's bows towards Le Havre.

Horatio stood at the window of his office in Le Havre and stared out towards the river where he had last seen William and Archie. So far two boats full of the _Nonsuch's_ men had come in, and neither of them had seen their captain or his first lieutenant since they had received their last orders. It had been two hours since then, and there had been no sign of further survivors of the explosion.

His fists were clenched so tightly that the nails were digging painfully into his palms, but Horatio could not bring himself to care. He was not a man of prayer, but he could not help it now. _Please,_ he whispered into the night, _not them. Not William. Not Archie. Not both of them. Please God. It'll break me._

There was the sound of feet in the passageway outside — of one man with two feet and one man with a wooden leg. Brown opened the door to admit a dripping and bedraggled Bush, and closed it again behind him. Relief made Hornblower's knees weak, and to hide it he strode over to wring Bush by the hand. "William," he said. "Thank God. I feared the worst. Where's Archie?"

Then he met William's red-rimmed, exhausted eyes, and froze. "No," he whispered. "Where's Archie?"

"He…" and there was a catch in William's voice. "He blew up the powder barge. Saved all our lives."

Horatio's eyes were burning and he couldn't even bring himself to care for the shame of it. "It should have been me," William burst out suddenly, furious and miserable. "Damn him to hell, it should have been me! He took the bloody pistol right out of my hand and threw me overboard. Why the hell did he do it?"

The sob that had been building in Horatio's chest burst out of him, and he buried his face in his hands. Then William's arms were around his shoulders, holding him tightly as he wept. "It should have been me," Bush said again, in a hurt, wondering voice, and Horatio wriggled his arms free to wrap them around his last best friend, and then Bush — stalwart Bush, who had never wept even for the agony of his lost foot — was burying his face in Horatio's shoulder and shaking with silent tears. 

"It should have been neither of you," Horatio said into William's shoulder, when he could trust his voice not to break again. "This damn war. Damn Bonaparte. Damn siege. It wasn't your fault, William, it was mine. I should never have sent the two of you."

"It wasn't your fault either, Horatio," William said firmly. "He'd not want you to blame yourself."

"Do you think he would rather you blame yourself?"

Bush took a deep breath and loosened his grip on Hornblower's shoulders. Horatio stepped back and met his eyes. "No," he said, "I don't."

"Then he'd say we've both learned something."

"I suppose he would," Bush said with something that was almost a smile.

"And he'd say that I still have you."

"You do, Horatio. It's just the two of us now, I suppose."

"Well, then we'll damn well teach the Frogs what it means that there are still the two of us," Horatio said, red wrath rising to overtake his grief. "I'll see Boney cast down from his _imperial_ throne if I have to drag him myself."

"I've never yet seen you set your mind to something you didn't do in the end, sir," Bush said grimly. "If you say Boney falls, then fall he will."

**Author's Note:**

> So...I'm sorry. But this was actually the first idea that came to mind when I thought of rewriting the events at Caudebec. I managed to finagle a version where everyone actually does live in _What We Lost in the Fire, We Found in the Ashes,_ and I'm deliberately putting that work, not this one, as the last in this series, because that's the canon I prefer to believe. But this one works so well, I think, in terms of parallelism with canon and also in terms of the way the characters react, that I had to post it too.


End file.
